


The Pen is Mightier than the Swordfish.

by morwrach



Category: Black Sails
Genre: AU - Food Critic, AU - Restaurants, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eventual 'Chaz the moody vegetable supplier', Eventual fluff!, Eventual romance!, M/M, Modern Era, Slightly NSFW I guess, london setting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-08-22 03:59:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8271931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morwrach/pseuds/morwrach
Summary: Jay Flint is an embittered London food critic, John Silver is the incompetent head chef of new Thameside gastro-seafood restaurant 'Silver & Pearl.' Hijinks ensue.orThat 'James Flint as Food Critic' AU that wouldn't leave me alone and haunted my dreams until I wrote it.





	1. Appetiser.

Flint chewed again, experimentally, and the piece of undercooked swordfish seemed to fight back against his mouth, bringing the taste of inexplicably burnt garlic with it. He took great displeasure in removing the offending rubbery piece from his mouth with two fingers, feeling frustration that the restaurant staff seemed to show no concern that one of Britain’s most influential food critics was sitting in their pride and joy, having to pull tendrils of raw billfish from his front teeth. Across the room, a couple of foodies were trying to mask their excitement that Jay Flint, food critic, was eating in the same restaurant as them. Even this endorsement to his literary career however, could not lift the bad spirits which a raw piece of his favourite food had brought down around his head. He wiped his fingers on the large napkins which thankfully had been provided, talked curtly to the waitress, and headed out into the freezing London rain to hail a cab home, back to the peace of Kensington, and properly braised meats.  
  
Flint rested his head against the fogged window, tense and still, and focused his thoughts on the persistent sleeting rain. London seemed to be in greyscale that evening as it flitted by through the window of the black cab. He passed the sluggish Thames with its bobbing storage containers which sounded a distant muffled booming as the tide cast them together, past the modern brightly lit blocks at Vauxhall with their heads like open books, past the dim density of public parks with their marble monuments alert like shadowy sentinels; and all the while the city’s many streetlamps and shop windows and hanging strings of tiny lights dappled the passing scenes with an autumnal glow.  
  
After what seemed like years, and with Flint’s patience well and truly exercised, the taxi lurched its way past the Natural History Museum, and into the elegant red-brick seclusion of his street. Finally home, Flint walked with bare feet across the Turkish-tiled floor and their welcome coolness began to abate his bad temper. At home everything was in its correct, quiet, ordered place – his private empire of comforts and trophies and keepsakes spread out at his command. He propped himself back upon his writing chair, unpopped a few buttons of his collarless white shirt, and readied himself to counter Benjamin Hornigold’s farcically praiseworthy review of tonight’s restaurant. Hornigold – he could picture his culinary adversary now, permed granny-hair bobbing as he gobbled down morsels of blackened seafood without a moment’s hesitation, all the time ruddily glowing at whatever idiot their head chef was. Old buffer probably couldn’t even taste anything anymore, Flint chuckled to himself.  
  
He opened his laptop, briefly glancing over his emails: _Miranda, The Guardian, Miranda, Gates_ , and set to work, tumbler of scotch in hand. He began, “Is there a single good quality about _Silver and Pearl_? Certainly the handsome building sits proud and unlikely among the deformed and Viagra-ed apartment blocks that have been seeded here at the once-unfashionable edge of the Thames.”  
  
He was in the mood for a battle, and as evening turned to nighttime, his fingers clattered across the keyboard like a peppering of cannon fire. Here, at last, was a restaurant he disagreed with Ben Hornigold and Alex Hamilton about enough to wreak some well-deserved literary revenge. “I am surrounded by a gaggle of young, semi-hysteric young people who flash their phones around and chortle about university,” he continued, “They strike me as the perfect audience for this offering, because right now it is something of an entry-level fishhouse. And if that sounds patronising, I can only congratulate you on being clever enough to notice.”  
  
Finally, draining his scotch, he concluded on a high note, pushing back his thick-rimmed glasses with delighted éclat and permitted himself a hoarse laugh. “This _could_ have been the best piece of swordfish I have ever tasted, if _Silver and Pearl_ had an ounce of sense and had hired staff who could actually cook anything more advanced than cheese on toast. The simplicity of these dishes is fine. It’s admirable. Lord save me from innovation for innovation’s sake. But if you’re going to do simple you have to do it perfectly. That rubbery, tasteless swordfish is a disaster.”  
  
Reflecting again that the review was perhaps a tinge more acrid than his usual fare, he reassured himself that his discerning readers relied upon him for his good wit and sound judgement. He gave it a swift, brutal once-over edit, attached it, and sent it swiftly to Miranda, his editor at the publication, and sat back heavily, content that he had fired a shot over Hornigold’s defences which would finally cause a sting.


	2. Starter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our hero Jay Flint (Guardian food critic), becomes his weekend-self: James McGraw (humble breadmaker), and catches the eye of a certain John Silver (talented patissier) behind a wall of macaroons, cookies, and iced buns. 
> 
> With Special Guest Appearances from: Hal Gates - long-suffering baker, Jack Rackham - an advocate of raw vegetables, and Charles Vane - shadowy food produce supplier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've finally finished Chapter Two! My sincerest apologies that I'm updating this so slowly. I have it all planned out (Appetiser, Starter, Mains, Dessert!), but my day job is being a writer (of sorts) too, and I'm often overworked. Thank-you for reading! x
> 
> P.s. The unofficial anthem for this chapter is 'Bohemian Like You' by The Dandy Warhols ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU3mc0yvRNk )

Sunday dawned, fingers of cold November air stretching in from between the venetian blinds, and painting the walls with frosty stripes. James’ crumpled misanthropy unfurled and diminished as his memory slowly woke up and recognised that it was the end of the working week – a day to put the sharpness of Jay Flint away in a drawer, and put on the familiar quietness of James McGraw.  
  
On Sundays, he was in the habit of helping his old friend Hal Gates at his stall in Borough Market, and although James affected an appearance of begrudging compliance, he felt almost, almost like his old self again surrounded by hustle and bustle and floured up to the elbows. Setting off at 6am for the early morning set-up, he pulled his sage green knitted scarf up around his chin, forsook his reading glasses, and left his hair unattended under a tweed flatcap of dubious origin. London was cold with a damp, cloying mist, and after a while, within sight of the silhouette of the Houses of Parliament and next door, Big Ben with its face like a polished gold sovereign, he slipped quietly down the mottled grey steps and onto the sand of the Thames bed. A mischievous breeze swept his hat off his head, and the ginger strands of his hair into his eyes, and he took a little skipping run forward to retrieve it from being swept into the water.  
  
With the tide out, he could indulge the buccaneer fantasies of his boyhood, and pursue a hunt for treasures lost in the river. He kept his gaze close to the ground, searching for bits of history raised from the water, entirely lost in his idle habitual search. The grey-green Thames lapped rhythmically, and he felt reassured by the familiarity of the water and its musical similarity to the sea. He stooped to pick up the stem of a broken clay pipe, bone-white and bleached against the sand, and slipped it into his pocket. Unbidden he felt again the sensation of the chalky pipe texture and Tom’s warm fingertips as he placed a little pile of stems into James’ own open hand on another such chilly morning. He accepted the tangible tug of yearning and fondness and regret into himself with bittersweet welcomeness, and meandered forward through the veil of mist towards his destination with the bells of St Paul's pealing invisibly in the distance.  
  
  
***  
  
James relaxed into the habitual Sunday-morning bubbling activity of the market. He wasn’t a critic, he was just a food lover, at one with the moving swell of people and their animated conversations, “Look at the size of that focaccia!” “Mummy! I want an artichoke!” ,but also happily removed – a little zen sphere of bread-making in the eye of the storm. Flouring his broad palms and beginning to knead the cooled dough, he reflected that whilst he was absorbed in the habitual motions of making food rather than critiquing it, the loudness and anger of the world just faded away. The reserved tension of his writing left his hands and transformed into the controlled energy of chopping or kneading or washing – the simple love of food, and a care in its creation. With the constant warmth of the oven at his back and the chatter of voices in the air, he drifted into a memory lulled by regular motion of kneading.  
  
_He was back in the steaming kitchen of their restaurant, chopping mounds of raw broccoli, shouting firm orders to the kitchen staff over the din of pots and pans, and then looking up and catching Thomas in the doorway, caught off-guard admiring him in a moment of open adoration. “James.”_  
  
  
Coming back to his body in the present day, he felt that familiar pain - the heavy yearning ache of the unreachable past, a dull coldness which sunk resolutely from his throat to the pit of his stomach. He moved past it with the habitual firmness of putting an object away to its usual place. He was used to this on Sundays. When writing work was not there to distract him, Thomas flooded back. Anyway, memories could wait, but rolls could not.  
  
Across the way, Vane’s squawking East Landan hipster tottered over the immense jewelled punnet of polished impossibly-bright peppers, spreading his elegant arms wide as he loquaciously explained the benefits of the vitamins found in said peppers, and their positive effects on the gastric system to an unimpressed middle-aged man. James quirked his lips fondly – as much as he despised air-headed food preachers, underneath Jack’s big wooly hats, purposeless skinny scarves, tacky plethora of gold finger rings, and immaculately trimmed sideburns, he was the real deal – he knew about the properties of foods in careful, biologically-proven detail, and he took the time to explain it to customers, albeit judgementally.  
  
As Hal put the newly made rolls into the oven, and pottered off somewhere to talk to someone about supplying him with discounted olives, Flint leaned back against the oven door, and brushed clouds of flour from his freckled forearms. Basking in the warmth on his back, James began to survey the lively market, searching for those charming morsels of human life in the city. Following the outstretched signpost of a child’s pointing finger, James found his gaze settling on perfectly organised rows of macaroons, arranged into a pastel rainbow, leading to Aztec step pyramids of oaty flapjacks, surmounted by precariously placed dishes of sugared almonds and friendly sugar mice. “Go on then, ask the nice man for a coconut bun, Felicity,” said the Mum’s weary, cheerful voice. The “nice man” in question emerged from behind a huge person-high tower of salted caramel brownies, a slight figure in a boxy blue denim jacket and a long white apron with the bakery logo emblazoned upon it (a cake fork with wings). The man’s fresh face was full of animated enthusiasm, describing the coconut bun’s hidden jam with an air of self-conscious suggestion. James found himself completely absorbed in those blue, blue eyes, and in tracing that perfect ringlet of dark brown hair falling into those blue, blue eyes as the “nice man” boxed up said coconut bun for Felicity and Annika. “ _Good god_ ,” his inner voice said to himself, “ _you’re a cliché_.” He tried to make the inner voice sound disgusted, but he couldn’t really manage it. There was a certain type of noble magic in admiring an attractive stranger…  
  
Hal budged past to take the rolls out of the oven, and a sudden mid-morning swell of hungry Londoners prevented James from continuing his education in coconut and cinnamon bun fillings. Two solid hours passed by in slathering breads with olive oil, plaiting raw dough into complex braids and knots, counting change, and in blunt, easy conversation with Hal about flour prices, the bastard Tories’ new budget cuts, and which washed-up Strictly Come Dancing contestant would be wheeled out for the Oxford Street Christmas lights switch on this year. It wasn’t until Hal disappeared off into the crowd on some errand again that he had a chance to look back over at the bakery. The “nice man,” _Luke_ he decided to call him, had taken off the jacket, and was engaged in filling a row of donuts with custard from a piping bag. James’ intent gaze raked up _Luke_ ’s forearms, taut from expertly dispensing custard, and over the tantalising hints of tattoos he could see just peeping from his rolled-up shirt sleeves. He noticed the strong blue outline of another one on the young man’s chest, revealed by the open neck of his striped shirt, and resting in the little dip between collarbones, the glint of a necklace chain. He moved up over the curve of _Luke_ ’s neck, slightly shiny from sweat, and over his face. Something glinted in the little shaft of weak November sun from the roof – was that a nose stud? _Jesus_. James found his mouth watering a little, and hurriedly attributed it to the piles of cakes and biscuits surrounding the object of his attention. The young baker, he suddenly realised, had finished with the donuts, and was looking right at him. _Luke_ quirked his eyebrows at James in an expression of wry amusement, and pushing his index finger into his mouth, obscenely and slowly sucked the spilt custard off it and winked. _Fuck._ James turned away hurriedly to face the oven, feeling the warm throb of a semi in his jeans. _Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._  
  
  
“Just go over there and talk to him.” Hal stated bluntly, and James, red-faced (it was the heat from the oven, obviously), and jittery, disappeared at speed into the crowd to help Vane with those heavy boxes of onions. By the time he returned, the market was packing-up, and he could see out of the corner of his eye that the bakery stall was deserted. Tension left his body immediately, and returned full force when his eyes alighted on the small cakebox sitting expectantly on the floury counter of Hal’s stand. Opening it, he found an oversize cronut with a green crumbly topping, and a napkin with a note in blue biro. “You look like a pistachio man to me,” the note smirked, “Call me sometime. John.” A mobile number followed. James found himself smiling despite his embarrassment, and it suddenly felt more like bright July than frosty November.  
  
  
***  
  
He bit through the crispy, delicious layers of the truly first-class pastry as he ambled along the Thames bank, hearing the cheers of the crowd from the Globe, and the raucous violins of a street-busking duo. Still unable to stop involuntarily smiling, he tipped the last few crumbs to a small gathering of pigeons. The warm, sunlit mood lasted almost all the way home – and it would have, had he not turned to look across to where the subject of his most recent review sat, looking out on the water. A large banner billowed over the front of Silver  & Pearl, loudly and proudly stating “The best piece of swordfish I have ever tasted! – Jay Flint, The Guardian.” His eyes widened, his hands bunched into shaking fists by his sides, and a feeling of acrid disgusted fury rose up in his throat. “Those shits” he said to himself, startling a woman passing by. He made forward, intending to bust in through the front doors and fucking throttle the Manager, and then remembered that he was in his weekend clothes. He was his soft, open, unprofessional self, and he could not allow Jay Flint and James McGraw to cross paths.  
  
Giving Silver and Pearl’s banner one last, boiling stare, he walked off in the direction of the Tube, fuming with indignation, and with John Silver’s phone number carefully tucked inside his breast pocket.

**Author's Note:**

> Much credit to Guardian food critic Jay Rayner, whose acerbic commentary heavily inspired my Flint, and many of Flint's pithiest moments are his.


End file.
